


Changelings

by Adina



Category: Borderland Series - Terri Windling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-04
Updated: 2006-12-04
Packaged: 2018-01-25 07:13:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1638359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adina/pseuds/Adina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one is ever cool when they first come to Bordertown.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Changelings

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to <a href="http://sillypuck.livejournal.com/">Sillypuck</a> for the fandom-specific beta.
> 
> Written for Angie

 

 

The sign over the door read "Wu's World Emporium," but more important was the tug trying to yank me through the door. Inside I ignored the junk piled on shelves and hanging from the ceiling and went straight to the middle-aged--old, for B-Town--woman behind the counter.

"You have coffee," I told her. It was not a question.

"Perhaps," she said without letting any expression I could read cross her face.

I wasn't awake enough for a song-and-dance routine. Yesterday had been a late night, a little Mad River water, and a lot of rum; this morning was too damn early and no damn coffee. "It's over there, if you've forgotten," I said, gesturing past her left shoulder to a closed cabinet. "How much?"

She looked surprised for a moment, then vague, and finally she smiled. "I have a small supply for special customers."

 _Special customers_ meaning those willing to pay her price when no one else in town had so much as a bean, no doubt. "How much?" I repeated.

Before she could respond, the bell over the door gave a delicate chime as someone entered the store. The elf, female if I was any judge, was wearing trousers of rough, blue canvas that looked nothing like blue jeans, a loose knit shirt that looked even less like a tee-shirt, and an expression of wide-eyed wonder that wouldn't survive Bordertown for more than a week. Her mud-green Mohawk was at odds with both her clothes and her expression. When she saw us looking at her she started to bow, aborted that, opened her mouth, closed it again. After a moment of visibly rehearsing her speech she said, "I heard you have a bike for sale?"

The store's proprietor was doing a better job of keeping a straight face than I was, but I suppose she'd have to if she wanted to make a sale. "I do," she said, coming out from behind the counter. "It's not rideable, however. A prospector in the Nevernever found it submerged in a pond. The engine must be dismantled, cleaned, and reassembled."

The elf's nose was practically twitching. "Of your courtesy, I would examine this machine," she said. I hid a snicker behind my hand.

The proprietor gestured towards the back of the store with not quite a bow. "Please."

I followed them back because I obviously wasn't going to get my coffee until they were done. The Swamp Thing's ride was parked between two ceiling-high stacks of boxes. Caked top to bottom with mud, silt, and less identifiable gunk, it looked like it had spent every year since the Change submerged in the muck, which was more than likely, given the lack of a spellbox to drive it when magic conked out the engine. If I had been the prospector, I would have thrown the thing back and gone fishing for more useable loot.

The elf obviously didn't agree. Alternately cooing over it and making little distressed noises on its behalf, she examined every mucky bit, even opening the gas tank to find that too full of mud. At last she stood up, leaving one hand possessively draped over the bike's handlebars. "I have silver," she said simply.

The proprietor nodded without jumping on the chance to get the filthy thing out of her store. "Have you the tools?"

The elf gave the bike a worried look. "Some." Stroking the gas tank, she dislodged a chip of dried mud, revealing a glimpse of midnight blue paint. She looked up at the proprietor with more trust and truth in her face than was safe or wise. "Not, I fear, a sufficiency."

The proprietor nodded again, looking thoughtful. She glanced at me and then turned back to the elf. "I have a truck in the Nevernever. It should have come in two days ago. You bring it in, the bike is yours and you can spend your silver on the tools to fix it. This young man," indicating yours truly, "can guide you to it." Before I could protest, she turned to me. "There are five hundred pounds of coffee beans in that truck, Columbian Supremo. You get fifty pounds for finding it and bringing it in."

You'll notice I didn't ask how she knew I could find it, though I did wonder. But fifty pounds of coffee, in a shortage that her five hundred pounds would only dent, would keep me in trading stock for a year. "Sure."

The elf's mouth was moving as she rehearsed her speech again. "Sure," she said, sounding suspiciously familiar. "It's a deal."

***

It wasn't quite that simple, of course. Neither the elf nor I had a bike, not unless you counted the mud monster, which I didn't, nor food or supplies for a journey of uncertain length. The store's proprietor gave me a cup of coffee while she put together trail rations, a first aid kit, flares, and a jerrycan of gas, so I didn't mind the wait. At last she loaded us down with the gear and took us around the back of the store, leaving us with an elderly but respectable Honda Goldwing.

I hopped on first because I'm the guy, of course. The elf watched from the side as I kicked the bike to life--or tried to. After four or five tries her eyebrow was up and her mouth quirked to one side.

"I think yon beast mislikes you," she said when I stopped to catch my breath.

"You think you can do better?" I asked.

The eyebrow stayed up. "I would assay it."

So I got off again and bowed her theatrically towards the bike. "Give it a shot." She looked blankly at me. "If you're trying to sound like a human you say, 'I'll give it a shot.'"

"Ah." She straddled the bike. "My thanks."

Of course the damn thing started first try for her, purring like a very large and very happy cat. Shaking my head I strapped our gear on, got up behind her, and we were off.

Describing the Nevernever is a pointless exercise. Either you've been there and don't need me to tell you about it, or you haven't and nothing I can say will possibly convey its intrinsic weirdness.

It started out normally enough, the answer to the question _Where is the truck with five hundred pounds of coffee?_ being straight down the west road. The road soon split, though, the left fork turning into a steep and rocky road leading to a shining city on a hill, the right wide and smooth leading down to nothing I could see, and if that all sounds familiar you must have read True Thomas more recently than I. Our road, of course, was the barely visible track in the middle. We crept slowly down it for a couple of miles before emerging back on what looked like the west road again, this time heading in the opposite direction. You could even see B-Town in the distance.

The elf must have heard stories of the Nevernever, because she didn't even hesitate when I indicated that that was the direction to go. I was also, after a couple of hours in her company, getting tired of thinking of her as _the elf_. A passing magic eddy killed the engine, switching us to the blessedly silent spellbox, so I took the opportunity to talk without shouting. "You got a name?"

A mile or so passed in silence, no noise but the birds in the trees and our tires over the strangely smooth pavement. "You can call me Nightingale," she said with an aura of defeat.

"Mongrel," I said. She tried to turn and look at me, which is impossible on a bike. "That's what most people call me."

Another mile passed. "That does not seem to me a most friendly name," she said at last. I shrugged even though she couldn't see me. "You are not half-human," she added as if I might have forgotten.

"A halfie? Nah." The five hundred pounds of coffee were off to our right, now, so I said, "Turn here," when we got to a likely looking road. The spellbox cut out about then as the engine coughed to life, so that was the end of that heart-warming little conversation.

Another couple of hours and five right-angle turns that ought to have had us going in circles brought us to a white panel truck of the sort that might have delivered bread in my grandparents' day. It was parked to the side of the road but not off it, with no driver to be seen. The elf, who I still couldn't think of as Nightingale, pulled the bike in beside it and I hopped off.

The first question, what happened to the driver, was the easiest to answer. I jumped up on the running board or whatever you call that step thing, planning to open the door. Instead a head popped up (still attached to a living, breathing body, the Nevernever's weird, but not that sort of weird) startling me badly enough that I fell off backwards. Once he'd been seen, the driver kept his head up but the door closed and locked.

"Hey!" I called through the closed window. "Wu sent us to find you!" At least I assumed the proprietor of Wu's World Emporium was Wu, and a right idiot I'd look if she wasn't.

I could see the driver's mouth move but couldn't hear a word of it. Finally he opened the window a crack, about wide enough for a folded piece of paper to squeeze through. "Who are you?" he demanded. "What do you want?"

I wanted fifty pounds of coffee and the relative normalcy of B-Town. "Mongrel," I shouted back. "Nightingale. Wu sent us to bring you in."

"How do I know you're really from Ms. Wu?" he asked.

That was a problem that had never occurred to me. I exchanged glances with the elf, still straddling the bike.

"You do not," she said, raising her voice without actually shouting, which was a useful trick. "Yet unless you wish to remain here until birds come and cover your truck over with leaves, you must choose to trust soon or late."

"What happened?" I asked while the driver was still trying to wrap his brain around that one.

"Spellbox's dead," he said. "Hit an eddy and the engine died, but the spellbox didn't come on."

What I didn't know about spellboxes would fill a book. "You know anything about spellboxes?" I asked the elf. She was an elf, after all; maybe that's why Ms. Wu sent her along.

"To use, but not, alas, to repair," she said absently, staring at the truck with a frown. "Yet an it were the spellbox, the mortal engine would now suffice."

If it was that easy we were home free. The engine worked on the bike, so the magic must have passed on. "Start it up and let's blow this joint," I called to the driver. The look he gave me should have left knives behind. He fiddled with something out of view and absolutely nothing happened. I jumped up on the running board again and looked in, watching as he rolled his eyes and turned the key again. Still nothing.

I turned to report this to the elf, but found her wrestling with the engine cover instead, what would have been the hood on anything smaller.

"Hey!" the driver yelled. "Stay away from my engine!"

Ignoring that, I jumped down to peer into the engine compartment. I knew less about engines than I did spellboxes, but who could resist? The engine was big but the space under the hood was bigger, with enough empty space around the engine for the elf to crawl in with it, which was practically what she'd done.

"Ask him to attempt once more, if you please," the elf said, so I moved around where I could see what she was doing but still yell at the driver. Would have been easier if he'd opened the window but he didn't trust us or the Nevernever enough for that.

Absolutely nothing happened that I could tell, but the elf looked enlightened. "The solenoid does not click," she said, which might have been Elvish for all I understood. "Yet--" Pulling a wrench and a rag from her not-jeans pocket, she wrapped the rag around the wrench. From my angle I couldn't see what she did, but the fountain of sparks was pretty impressive. "Electricity flows, so--" She continued muttering to herself or maybe cooing to the engine, sometimes in English, sometimes in Elvish. I wandered back to the bike, figuring she could yell at the driver herself if she needed to.

About fifteen minutes later she crawled out of the truck, liberally smeared with oil and grime but grinning from pointed ear to pointed ear. "The grounding wire had slipped free of its mooring," she said, telling me nothing. The look of scorn she directed at the driver was eloquent. "He might have repaired yon vehicle days ago an he dared leave his refuge." She shrugged. "Still, if he will attempt once more--" She opened her mouth to yell to the driver but stopped when I touched her shoulder.

"Try it again," I said for her ears only.

She considered a moment, nodded. "Try it again!" she yelled.

Even from where I was sitting I could see the driver roll his eyes, but he obeyed. His shock when the engine started on the first try was even more obvious. The truck lurched into gear, but the elf ran to the front, holding up one hand imperiously to stop him. She slammed the engine cover shut and barely had time to jump to safety before the truck roared off.

"We had best follow lest he become lost," the elf said with evident satisfaction.

Returning to B-Town was uneventful, as was collecting my fifty pounds of coffee. I had nearly forgotten the excursion a month or two later when I received a message from Ms. Wu offering another lucrative job rescuing yet another truck. I wasn't terribly surprised when I got to Ms. Wu's store to find the elf again, astride an immaculately clean, midnight blue bike. She even had a sidecar for me.

 

 

 


End file.
